Tag Archives: walking

The Zen Ritual class has been meeting at SFZC City Center, each time studying a short verse from one of the many ceremonies that are traditional in Western Zen. Delving into the words we use to express our understanding and our intention, we find our particular places of connection, our points of entry to the gates of practice. For me this study of ritual has also helped to breathe new life into the forms, brightening the realm in which these activities take place, providing a context that resounds with meaning.

Week two we spoke about the Bodhisattva vows. Here they are again:

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.

The Buddha Way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.

Thus, we can take the Bodhisattva vows as an expression of our intention to awaken ourselves and others to the truths inherent in all things. We can take the vows with the intention to see through our mistaken ideas and meet the incomparable uniqueness of each person and thing.

This is a big commitment. You might have a motivation to become a better person and to have a positive impact on the world, but that can easily slip into just another goal for the striving ego. If you find yourself criticizing your own efforts to help, or those you are helping, you might ask yourself whether your good intentions have been channeled into striving for control. To really take up these vows skillfully you have to recognize that the inner world and the outer world are completely interpenetrating. That is, the world influences you, so you can influence the world. You don’t discount others’ ability to respond or your own ability to respond. You recognize that they work together.

Portrait of Lingzhao courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery online

I mentioned one of the stories of Lingzhao as an example of just this sort of view. Lingzhao was the daughter of a family of 9th Century Chinese lay practitioners who were deeply respected.

One day she and her father, Layman Pang, were walking along when he tripped and fell. Seeing this, Lingzhao threw herself on the ground next to him. When he asked what she was doing, she said, “I saw you fall down, so I’m helping.” This is truly Bodhisattva activity, meeting the one you are helping and seeing the world from their perspective. This is to literally level the playing field, eliminating any sense of hierarchy between helper and helped. In “the Hidden Lamp,” Joan Sutherland deftly refers to this as action “to help liberate the intimacy already inherent in any situation.” Once intimate with the moment, and the people and things in it, one can respond skillfully. Skillfulness arises as the result of not being blind to specific karmic conditions or to the vast interconnectedness they create.

Of course this does not mean that you have to become completely like the others in your life that need help. So, for example, you can’t help an alcoholic friend by becoming alcoholic yourself or enabling their alcoholism. Still, until you really make an effort to see their point of view and understand what makes them just as human as you, it’s not possible to offer a helpful response.

Layman Pang courtesy of elephantjournal

The story continues with Layman Pang’s reply to Lingzhao, which was, “It’s a good thing no one was looking.” Be careful not to fall into thinking that this is an expression of shame. The father is pointing toward the egolessness of his daughter’s response. The “no one” who is looking doesn’t get in the way of enlightened activity, doesn’t set up a separation, doesn’t need to be superior in order to offer aid. Feel free to get covered in dust! Then you can stand upright together.

Taking the Boddhisattva vows, we are promising to fall down and get up with everyone.

Sometimes it seems as though the Zen tradition is of many minds about the value of ritual. On the one hand, ritual can be seen as lifeless and formulaic, failing to express the immediacy of any instant or its true essence. It is criticized as rote activity that is lacking in any vitality, and fails to produce any insight. On the other hand, Zen is a tradition embraces ritual as a completely indispensable aspect of life, integral to even the most mundane of daily activities, and full of abstract expression. How can we understand this apparent dichotomy?

This question reminds me of the koan of Master Gutei and the boy. In Case 19 of the Blue Cliff Record, the commentary mentions an episode in which Master Gutei speaks with a young boy. The boy tells the Master that he’d held up one finger in response to a question about the Master’s teaching. The boy was simply making the same gesture for which Gutei was known, and which Gutei had learned from his own Master. Yet seeing the boy imitating him, the Master cut off the boy’s finger. What is the difference between the two? For me, this case points to the question of authenticity in practice. It reminds me that it is not enough to simply repeat the actions of the Ancestors; I must find a way to make the teaching and its expression as unique as I am.

Thus, although ritual is usually defined as activity done repeatedly and in a prescribed fashion, and religious ritual usually adds a layer of symbolism, the Zen teaching is that both are always present. You don’t need religion in order to add symbolic meaning, because the symbolic is always inherent in the mundane. This is the meaning of the phrase “practice and enlightenment are one.”

Still, it’s necessary to conduct our lives in a way that expresses this understanding; so we practice the ritual of zazen. “Sitting zazen” sees the impermanence and interconnection of life amidst stillness and amidst busyness. “Walking zazen” sees the impermanence and interconnection of life amidst movement and amidst peace. You can only know this by experiencing it. No matter how many times you read about zazen, or hear about zazen, or see people doing zazen, until you actually sit or walk zazen, you won’t know what it is. This is true of all ritual, and I believe that people know this intuitively. As Isadora Duncan, the famous and infamous American dancer once said,

Isadora Duncan

“No, I can’t explain the dance to you. If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.”

So talking about (and reading about) ritual gives you some context, yet you know that it’s true meaning is in the lived experience. This particular body and mind can’t find the expression without performing the ritual. Performing the ritual, this body and mind can realize that it has always been expressing the impermanence, expressing the peace, expressing the many, expressing the one.

Recently I was asked about whether I felt that there is any benefit from the work that I do. It struck me as an important question because, from the standpoint of right livelihood, no matter what work I do, it should matter. It should be of benefit to beings. In fact, taking the precepts means vowing to work toward making every moment a moment of benefit to all beings. This is a lofty aspiration, and yet it can be very mundane in its expression.

To some this concept of benefit might be understood as “merit,” a word Merriam Webster defines as “a spiritual credit held to be earned by the performance of righteous acts and to ensure future benefits.” However, since there is no spiritual accountant adding up credits and meting out future benefits, it might be better understood as positive energy whose benefit is in the creating act itself and in its dissemination. Typically, in traditional Zen ritual, we close by dedicating any merit that may have been generated to others, that they may be supported by our positive actions. That is, the most basic view of merit is simply that if you have a positive intention and you direct it toward someone else, they benefit and you also benefit by generating that positive intention. This is pretty intuitive. Any number of psychological studies have shown that when we have good feelings about someone else, this usually improves our own well-being. This is the Bodhisattva Way.

Returning to the matter of work – how is it that I can be of benefit? The person I was speaking to wanted to know. I paused to consider. The teaching of Zen is that there is nothing anyone can give you, because you are already an expression of that perfection which is more perfect than our idea of it. Certainly, as a person with my own set of illusions and hindrances, I recognize that it’s not possible for me to improve anyone else, nor is that my intention. So how is it that I can be of service?

I responded by saying that, in talking with me, people find courage and that helps them heal. “So,” this person replied, “you give them courage.” Well, no, not exactly. I walk with them in their journey of self-discovery, and they find their own courage, the courage to acknowledge what is. If they are open to it, they find that their life is a unique expression of that which is greater than them. This discovery helps them frame their experience and their response to the experience. It helps them to be more skillful with what arises.

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Establishing the Path of Practice (EPP), a year-long program for lay practitioners to develop a regular sitting practice at SFZC City Center - Last general group meeting Saturday, July 18th 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Thanks for your efforts all year long!

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From “Unfathomable Depths” by Sekkei Harada Roshi as translated by Daigaku Rumme and Heiko Narrog

"If the perspective of self does not intervene, [practice] is not a matter of understanding or not understanding. Nor is it a matter of being satisfied or unsatisfied. So just try to let go of everything."